


Believer

by Praemonitor



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: "Let's Wing It!" Fic Exchange, Character Study, Chloe Decker Finds Out, F/M, One Shot, Song Prompt: Believer (Imagine Dragons), Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11632359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Praemonitor/pseuds/Praemonitor
Summary: First things first, Lucifer had wings again. Fluffy standalone short, written for the Summer 2017 "Let’s Wing It!" Fic Exchange.





	Believer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanctuary_for_all](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/gifts).



> For sanctuary_for_all — your fics are classic across so many of my favorite fandoms, and I hope this little one-shot does your prompt justice! What a haunting and beautiful song, perfect for our detective and her Devil. Please have a listen at the link below. Written for the "Let’s Wing It!" Fic Exchange, to make both Chloe and Lucifer believers. :)
> 
> [Prompt]  
> [Believer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MJAg0VDgO0) by Imagine Dragons  
> Lyrics available [here](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/imaginedragons/believer.html).
> 
> **Special warning: non-graphic reference to oil spills and wildlife injury.** During such environmental disasters, waterbirds need dedicated rehabilitation and lots of dish soap to become flightworthy again. Reportedly, the brand Dawn is strong enough to strip the oil, but gentle enough to spare their feathers. I promise this is relevant!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own it.

First things first, Lucifer had wings again.

Chloe suffered a minor stroke when she met them, blazing white, erupting from his back and whisking her away from a firefight between trigger-happy perps. Fourteen feet from tip to tip, his were the magnum opus of wings. Even their counterfeits were beautiful, disembodied and plastic and trussed like a trophy on the black market, but the real things were unquestionably divine. Her initial reaction was neither dignified, nor subtle.

Cut her some slack, because Chloe was flown to safety, bridal-style, in the arms of the Devil himself, and her brain still had a lot of catching up to do.

Though truth be told, her belief and his feathers changed their friendship very little. Lucifer was still a licentious, unmitigated, and comprehensive ass, and Chloe was still Chloe. As usual, in the aftermath of a trying case, they sat at his piano for heartfelt conversation admixed with secondhand smoke, shots of whiskey, and dirty jokes. A time-honored tradition, wings or no.

Outside of emergencies, he kept them hidden, tucked beneath skin via magic she didn’t understand and didn’t care to. The Devil violated physics six ways from Sunday. Shouldn’t wings disrupt the contour of his back? Sans shirt, he was scarless now and looked otherwise normal, but Lucifer once palpated her shoulders to prove Chloe wasn’t an angel. Could she do the opposite, touch him and feel feathers under flesh?

Given the inevitable innuendo to follow, she didn’t ask.

Instead, life went on. They solved murders and ate takeout and pretended the kiss on Venice Beach never happened. A lapse in judgement, an idiot’s whimsy, regrettable and foolish. Chloe was a smart girl, and smart girls kept men like him at arm’s length. That was gospel long before his devil shtick got real literal, real fast.

But her heart and mind forever agreed to disagree, because Lucifer was a walking exercise in abstention long before those wings reentered the picture. Now she knew what he tasted like, such that Chloe felt empathy for addicts loose in a crack den, and in her dreams she groped feathers instead of scars.

On the one hand, she trusted him with her reputation, her career, her child, her life. On the other, Lucifer made her nervous. Chloe still wasn’t afraid of him, not exactly, but clarity struck at the most inopportune moments: together on a stakeout, sharing drinks at the Paddock, side by side in an elevator. Every once in a very great while, especially when alone with him, she glanced sidelong and remembered— _Yup, that’s Satan._

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Second things second, nobody touched his wings.

Chloe learned the etiquette right quick, way back when they were nothing but scars. Rarely did Lucifer ask that hands keep to themselves, so she respected it. His wings were his, an appendage like any other, though Chloe wondered what exactly their human analogue was — hair maybe, or extra arms?

She posed this question, which fascinated Lucifer. “Never thought about it.” He pondered a while. “Much more personal than an arm or leg. Impolite to wander in public with my feathers hanging out.” His mouth upturned in a cheeky grin. “Wings are like breasts, I suppose. Tastefully hidden, only brought out to play on special occasions, but when they are— ” Lucifer bit his lip, gaze landing somewhere decidedly south of her face. “Works of bloody art.”

Lecherous metaphors aside, it made a strange sort of sense. Wings were for flying, and breasts were for feeding babies, but the boorish and vulgar sexualized them both. Chloe felt hypocritical, resolving never to do so again. If brushing those feathers equated to a boob graze, then grabbing them was beyond offensive. Unfortunately, her subconscious didn’t give two shits about propriety, and the Devil in her dreams offered enthusiastic consent for Chloe to touch a helluva lot more than his wings.

She was a good person, but temptation never-ending, and Chloe Decker’s fall from grace came after a perfect storm of disaster. How exactly Lucifer got caught in a turf war between oil barons on the rigs near Santa Barbara was irrelevant. Best to avoid questions. In the dead of night on a Tuesday, she found him at the penthouse, naked but for boxers and knee-deep in his jacuzzi, holding Dawn dish soap because his precious pearly feathers were tar-brown and coated with crude oil.

“Twenty barrels it took to ground me.” His wings drooped, dripping filth like a bird in an oil spill, and Lucifer sported puppy eyes. “I need help, detective. Please.”

Chloe rubbed her temples and rolled up her sleeves. “The things I do for you.” She grabbed the half-gallon jug of Dawn and sat him in the hot tub, submerged to his armpits. Iridescent oil beaded from his feathers, coalescing in a slick film atop the water. “Ugh, disgusting.”

What even. This was her life now.

Hands already sudsed, the Devil started preening, tertiaries first, because he could reach those all on his lonesome. “Never thought I’d empathize with pelicans,” he mused. “Rest assured, those responsible for oil spills will burn for it.”

Detergent at the ready, Chloe reached for his feathers and stalled. “Your wings. I need— ” Self-restraint and a reality check were what she needed. Chloe swallowed, suddenly nervous as hell. This was much sexier in her imagination and involved a lot less petroleum. “I’m gonna touch your wings, okay?”

Lucifer nodded curtly.

Chloe knew him well enough to recognize when her partner was uneasy and trying to hide it. His shoulders locked, and he stopped talking, at least until Lucifer remembered that the soapy hands upon his wings weren’t there to hack them off. Though sticky with tar, the feathers were softer than she expected, and underneath really was just skin and bone.

He relaxed eventually, or at least forgot to be anxious, because stripping oil from feathers required equal parts determination and elbow grease. They scrubbed for hours and drained foul, foamy water from the hot tub twice. Chloe’s fingertips pruned, and her arms were tired. Stupid to worry about overstepping boundaries. This wasn’t intimate. This was exhausting.

At long last, Lucifer clamored from the jacuzzi to douse himself under the outdoor shower on his balcony. Brown suds rinsed away to reveal familiar feathers, none the worse for wear. He threw back his head, laughing in relief, washing clean the last dregs of this oily nightmare.

Chloe slumped, elbows on knees, and tossed aside the near-empty bottle of Dawn. “Let’s never do this again.” Resigned to go the fuck home for a power nap before work, that’s when perfectionism condemned her.

Standing to leave, Chloe indulged herself one last look at him, soaking wet and three-quarters nude, an angel incarnate, pure white wings unfurled against the cityscape at sunrise. Lucifer was most seductive when he didn’t try, but she couldn’t help noticing—

Where wings met shoulders lurked a big brown oil-blob. They weren’t done yet. She sighed, much too sleepy for this, marched straight to Lucifer, armed with soap, and without thinking — God, what was she thinking, she _wasn’t_ thinking — ducked under the shower with him, fully clothed.

He startled, a deer in the headlights. ”Uh, detective?”

Her unenthused, “Missed a spot,” was explanation enough, and Chloe set to task again.

But something was different this time, less objective, more charged. His skin went pink and pliant just before it sprouted feathers. Warm water rained down as she rubbed his back, square between wings. Lucifer clenched his fists hard enough to blanch knuckles, and his breath caught.

”Okay?” she asked.

He nodded again, slower this time, and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were blood-red.

And that did nothing for her, no siree, nothing at all. It was the barefaced lie Chloe told herself whenever he put his preternatural strength through its paces, when the guilty met their reward, when hellfire burned behind brown eyes and his voice pitched deep and inhuman. How downright dangerous to want a man who could damn her with a whisper. How utterly moronic to love a man around whom God himself tread carefully.

She did love Lucifer, pointless to deny it, but how Chloe loved him was very much open for debate. He was family, of course, an honorary Decker. Unfortunately, the Devil was also cut like a sculpture, sporting scruff on a throat bared in offering. Trembling a little, he even whispered her name like a prayer, begging if she’d ever heard it, as rivulets of water coursed along his spine and off his wings.

Chloe was only human. She replaced her hands with her mouth, and surrender came in an avalanche.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Third things third, he held nothing so sacred as her freedom of choice.

When Lucifer finally explained himself, why he pulled the plug after that beachside kiss to end all kisses, why he snuffed their affair before it properly caught fire, Chloe hugged him tighter than she’d ever hugged anyone. “Whatever you feel for me, Father forced it upon you.” Lucifer choked, devastated, furious, and those were definitely tears on his cheek. “I took advantage of that, took advantage of _you_ — ”

“You didn’t. You’d never.” Of all the ridiculous deal breakers, that’s what sent him running? They’d been through too much together to fight over something so asinine. “Nobody forced me to care. You repulsed me when we first met, remember?” Chloe watched his smile bloom and beam. How far they’d come. “And it damn well wasn’t your father who changed my mind.”

Lucifer hung his head. “But he made you for me, and you deserve so much better than— ”

”Excuse you, megalomaniac much?” Chloe raised an eyebrow, because God struck her as an equal opportunity sort of guy. “How do we know he didn’t make _you_ for _me?_ ”

Lucifer froze. “Because— ” He opened and closed his mouth a few times.

”I was here first, born and raised in L.A.” Chloe shrugged, unsure why she felt so confident and comfortable with this soul-numbing conclusion. “Minding my own business, living my own life, until somebody— ” She glanced accusingly skyward. “ —threw a car into a bus, and you into my path.” Her arms crossed. “Not the other way around.”

Lucifer was flabbergasted. ”That’s preposterous, detective. Completely absurd. It sounds— ” He took a breath, thought about it, and suddenly a believer was born. “It sounds exactly like something my dad would do.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Last things last, the big guy upstairs might be a cheeky little fucker, but time is immaterial, and his favorite daughter was planned in full from the start. With a destiny to move mountains, part seas, and usher peace, Chloe Decker deserved only the best to light her way, a morning star to call her own.

God never fumbled at the bottom of the ninth.

**Author's Note:**

> Everybody assumes that Chloe was made for Lucifer, but maybe vice versa or both? Not sure if that’s better or worse in our Devil’s opinion, though certainly a curve ball in this celestial soap opera.


End file.
